"Lawful access" refers to a police investigative technique that allows for the interception of electronic communications during a lawful search:

"During the first session of the 41st Parliament, in
February 2012, the Minister of Public Safety introduced a bill on 'wiretapping' in the era of new electronic technologies (...) "

"Bill C-30 responds to the concerns of law enforcement and national
security agencies that new technologies – such as Internet
communications – often present obstacles to the lawful interception of
communications. The bill has two parts, each responding to one of its
central objectives.

Part 1 creates the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic
Communications Act, a new law governing telecommunications service
providers (TSPs).

Part 2 amends the Criminal Code and several other acts in order to
modernize investigative and interception techniques available to law
enforcement and in order to modernize certain offences."

"As well, Bill C-12, introduced several months before Bill C-30, amends the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
to expand the circumstances in which law enforcement agencies can ask
private organizations to disclose personal information without the
consent of the individual concerned.The legislative debate on Bill C-30 and its predecessors has largely
focused on privacy. Other important considerations include a new
requirement that TSPs (including Internet service providers) put in
place interception capabilities, the technical standards for and costs
of these capabilities, and the need for new lawful access rules. The
debate on these issues continues (...)"

"This background paper compares Bill C-30 with similar legislation in
these three countries. Major differences and similarities are
highlighted, with particular reference to three aspects covered in the
Canadian bill: interception capability, requests to TSPs for information
about subscribers and tracking warrants. The comparison is a useful one
because Bill C-30 is the latest of several significant Canadian
initiatives that have dealt with lawful access and that have proposed
consistently similar provisions."

Canadian Government Consultation on Lawful Access
(September 14, 2007): "The purpose of this consultation is to provide a
range of stakeholders - including police and industry representatives
and groups interested in privacy and victims of crime issues - with an
opportunity to identify their current views on possible approaches to
updating Canada’s lawful access provisions as they relate to law
enforcement and national security officials’ need to gain access to CNA
[customer name and address] information in the course of their duties.
The possible scope of CNA information to be obtained is later
identified, but it should be noted from the outset that it would not, in
any formulation, include the content of communications or the Web sites
an individual visited while online."

CIPPIC Paper on Government's Lawful Access Initiative
(October 16, 2007): "This is a follow-up to the September 14, 2007
Library Boy post entitled Canadian Government Consultation on Lawful
Access ... Yesterday, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest
Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa made its submission
available. In its conclusions, CIPPIC remains highly sceptical of
government arguments about the need for greater access to CNA
information: 'Information identifying telecommunications subscribers can
be highly sensitive given the electronic trail of publicly available
and otherwise accessible data that individuals now leave about
themselves on the internet and other digital devices as they go about
their daily lives. For this reason, we submit that CNA information
raises a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' on which a Charter
challenge to laws permitting warrantless access could be based' ..."

Telecoms Fight Canadian Government Over E-Surveillance Costs
(April 4, 2008): "The University of Ottawa's Michael Geist draws
attention to documents obtained by Canwest News Service reporters that
reveal a behind-the-scenes tug-of-war between industry and the federal
government over who should bear the costs of electronic surveillance."

2007 Annual Report on Use of Electronic Surveillance in Canada
(May 20, 2009): "The report [from Public Safety Canada] outlines the
use of electronic surveillance of private communications by law
enforcement agencies to assist in criminal investigations. Under the
Criminal Code, agencies must obtain judicial authorization before
conducting the surveillance. The government is required to prepare and
present to Parliament an annual report on the use of electronic
surveillance. The 2007 Annual Report covers a five-year period from 2003
to 2007."

Canadian Government Re-Introduces Internet Surveillance Bills
(November 2, 2010): "The federal government has re-introduced two bills
in the House of Commons that would allow police and intelligence
officials to intercept online communications and get personal
information from Internet service providers. The government explains
that the legislation targets child sexual predators, distributors of
pornography and identity thieves. The bills also go after people who use
the Internet to plan terrorist acts."

Disclaimer

Neither the content nor the views contained in this blog represent the positions of my employer or of any association to which I belong. Any links to a news article, an academic study or another blog post should not be considered to indicate any form of endorsement on my part or on that of my institution. This is a purely personal blog for the purposes of sharing information about library issues and legal research.